Shanghai, Nanking Road, 1937.

Excellently preserved copy of this rare album of photographs documenting the bombing of Shanghai at the opening of the Second Sino-Japanese war, a haunting and moving visual record of what is considered by many to be the first battle of World War II.

£3750

A detailed plan accurately illustrating the movements of the British and French armies at the battle of Alexandria. In it, Sir Ralph Abercrombie was fatally wounded but the action was considered a British victory as the French were forced out of Egypt soon after. This plan is signed ‘J. W. Hamilton’.

£650

Liège, Imprimerie H. Vaillant-Carmanne, 1924.

An offprint, with its own title-page and pagination, of this important study. This is a presentation copy, inscribed in ink ‘To Robert Byron. A. A.’ at the head of the front wrapper. Andreades was the first professor of public finance at the University of Athens and the author of a monumental work...

£45

Toronto, AE Publications, 2023.

An extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves. In this catalogue of eighty-six works from his collection of books on civil engineering, Mark Andrews situates a series...

£85

London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939. 

A proof copy, complete with typed errata attached, of this collection of ninety-five papers relating to the negotiations between the Soviet and British governments between March and December 1939. 

£750

London: Printed in the Year 1817. Re-printed and Re-published, with Notes and Alterations, by Permission of the Author, by T. J. Wooler … 1818.

First edition thus of an inexpensive reprint of Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), the style adapted by Thomas Wooler, with Bentham’s permission, to ‘render it more easy of comprehension to the popular reader’. In this form it first appeared in instalments in Wooler’s radical...

£225

London, J. & C. Adlard for T. Hurst ‘for the Proprietor … at the Stadium, Chelsea’, 1835.

First edition, with advice on riding and driving, illustrated by George and Robert Cruikshank. A marksman and inventor with an ‘inclination to self-publicity and aggrandisement’ (Credland), Charles Random de Berenger (1772–1845) in 1830 established ‘the Stadium’ or ‘British National...

£180

Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. 

£1000

Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584. 

An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration.  The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France.  He was briefly forced from his post after...

£450

London, T. Bensley, for the Author ... 1809.

First edition of Campbell’s most re-printed poem, based on a massacre of American patriots by British forces and their Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) allies in 1778. Its portrayal of ‘pastoral innocence evoked only to be destroyed by the savagery of war (embodied in this case by Mohawk allies of...

£650

Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1858-1859.

First edition, a very attractive copy, of Carey’s principal work. ‘His treatment of social science was original, and led him to a series of supposed discoveries, the order of which he has stated in the introduction of his most important work The Principles of Social Science. His point of departure...

£500

Saumur, H. Fournier for A. Degouy and Névo-Degouy, and Paris, Anselin, 1830.

First edition of an encyclopædic work on horsemanship for the use of the French cavalry, with the suite of plates. ‘L’ouvrage est en effet une veritable encyclopédie hippique : hippologie, extérieur, emploi à la selle, au trait et au bat, alimentation, hygiène, maladies et accidens, haras...

£225

Paris, Garnier brothers, 1893.

First edition of a well illustrated history of the French cavalry. A cavalry captain, Henri Choppin (1831–1916) published widely on the French military: the first of several works devoted to the cavalry, La cavalerie française is handsomely illustrated throughout and accompanied by sixteen...

£175

London, Cassel & Company Ltd, [1956; – 1956; – 1957; – 1958].

First editions, with dust-jackets, of Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, his last major historical work.

£200

[London, Spottiswoode & Co. for] London, New York, & Bombay (Mumbai), Longmans, Green, & Co., 1899.

First edition of Churchill’s second book, a history of Lord Kitchener’s conquest of Sudan in 1896-99 informed by his own service as both a cavalry officer and a war correspondent on the campaign, profusely illustrated with drawings and maps.

£2500

Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1702[–4]. 

First edition of Clarendon’s monumental History of the Civil War, with a presentation inscription by his son Henry Hyde, the second Earl (1638–1709). 

£3250

London, for G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1796.

First edition in English, printed in the same year as the French original, of this account of General Pichegru’s campaigns during the early French Revolutionary Wars.

£185

Bamberg, [cover: ‘im Komptoir der Zeitung’,] 1804.

First and only edition, very rare, preserving the original binding of printed and gilt pink silk.

£650

Dresden and New York: ‘Druck & Verlag von H.G. Münchmeyer’, 1895.

Fortieth edition and 25th anniversary ‘Jubel-Ausgabe’. This lavishly-illustrated account of the Franco-Prussian War was published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of this conflict that was, in retrospect, a harbinger of the political and military turmoil of the following century: ‘the...

£750

[S.l.,] 1797.

Anonymous anti-French pamphlet, which saw a number of printings in 1796 and 1797, and calls for a general insurrection against the French in Italy. The pamphlet draws very heavily, albeit without any acknowledgment of its debt, on Francesco Gusta’s 1794 Saggio critico sulle cruciate,...

£450